What’s with the mania for replacing the title cards on silent films? The YouTube version above of this early Stan Laurel parody seems authentic, but the version I initially got off the Internet Archive has different, cruder titles and the credits are simplified down to nothing. It was interesting to learn from the more complete version that Tay Garnett wrote the titles, a fact the future director of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE fails to mention in his (terrific) autobiography.

This version might be more complete as regards credits, but all versions end EXTREMELY abruptly, in a way I doubt was intended. I mean, anything’s possible, and the film is a little shambolic, but I suspect there was originally more to it.

I used to look down on these efforts. Partly because you might occasionally get fobbed off with a Stan film when what you wanted was a Stan & Ollie. accept no substitutes — but the agreeably silly parodies Stan starred in (MUD AND SAND with Rhubarb Vaselino) have appeal. The lampooning of John Barrymore here is very accurate — Stan’s essaying of the transformation is excellent (the knees are the first bits to go evil) and his first appearance is actually really disturbing, owing to the way his wig distorts his features. Stan also throws in some sideways reaching, a hieroglyphic-type pose that seems to owe more to Charles Ogle or Max Schreck than to the mannerisms of the Great Profile. I suspect that pose perhaps dates back further in theatrical history, and was an accepted method of portraying supernatural menace.

(When I was a kid, the accepted mode of impersonating the Frankenstein monster was 1) stiff-kneed gait, yes, fine accurate, and 2) arms stretched out in front like a sleepwalker, something the monster doesn’t do –– except briefly I guess when in that one where he goes blind.)

There’s one very impressive set, but it has a French sign on it so it must’ve been constructed for another, more important film — ah, but are people still watching that film today? (Anyone know what it’s from?)

Producer Joe Rock also made Michael Powell’s first important film, THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. Powell remarked that all his big breaks came from either Americans or Hungarians.

Home from Bologna, caught up on at least some of my missed sleep, and buzzing (in a bleary way) to write up in more details some of the wonders witnessed. 32 screenings in all, many of them containing more than one (short) film. 26 of them marvelous, and the others merely delightful.

By the way, Fiona came too. She didn’t want me to announce it on social media because she’s seen THE BLING RING and didn’t want Hermione from HARRY POTTER magicking her way into our vacant property and stealing all our bling crap.

Here’s the rundown of our last day’s viewing, a fairly light one —

9.00 a.m. I had been enjoying Mariann Lewinsky’s curation of the Krazy Serial, and wanted to see how it turned out. Bologna always has a 100-year-old serial, and this year the centenary of Dada was celebrated with an eccentric collection of episodes from incomplete serials, standalone shorts and scratch-assemblies of found footage. The last show memorialized WWI, with DIE ENTDECKUNG DEUTSCHLANDS DIE MARSBEWOHNER, a German sci-fi film in which Martians visit Munich (they are greatly impressed by the lid action on beer steiners); CAMP OF GOUDA, a newsreel study of a Belgian refugee camp in Holland (lacework and brush-making, the start of occupational therapy); NAPOLEON AND SALLY, in which the war is reenacted by two chimpanzees in fancy dress with ghastly, wraithlike shaved faces.

I congratulated Mariann on the serial’s climax: “It all came together beautifully.”

10.15. LIFE’S HARMONY, a very early Borzage. A sweet, naively ridiculous plot about rival church organists in a small town. Manages to pack amnesia and an evil twin into its denouement. Some beautiful shots in darkened rooms lit by source light including a fireplace. Borzage is already spreading his wings.

11.30. LAUGHTER IN HELL, a Universal pre-code which is everything everyone has already said it is since its New York screening.

14.30. (long lunch to recover from previous) THE PALEFACE (Fiona was knocked unconscious by the heat and missed most of this); MAIDS AND MUSLIN, a wearisome Monte Banks comedy with some interest raised by Oliver “Babe” Hardy as villain, and some animated explosions and impacts scratched into the living celluloid; MONSIEUR DON’T CARE, a seven-minute fragment of one of Stan Laurel’s hilarious Valentino parodies. Stan plays Rhubarb Vaselino, fleeing the court of Louis IV in a world which features yellow cabs and giant safety razors. Also Stan in drag. Produced by Joe Rock, who later gave us EDGE OF THE WORLD. Even in fractured, flickering and fragmentary form, this laid them in the aisles, and made up for Fiona’s lapse into unconsciousness. A Keaton film like THE PALEFACE unfolds with measured logic in a way that can lull the sleepy viewer, but Mr. Laurel’s loopy spoofs (or perhaps spooves?) keep everyone caffeinated.

And then I was going to see FAT CITY in the Piazza Maggiore, a film I love, but it was late, I was drunk, the film was delayed, the pubs were roaring with football, and I drifted home.